The Sun in the Morning (52 page)

That she could also, despite her archaic dress and manner, be surprisingly modern was proved by the way in which she dressed the doll (supplied by Aunt Lizzie) that was put into the top of Bets's Christmas stocking. Aunt Lizzie dressed the other one, which went into the top of mine, and the difference between the two was remarkable. Both dolls were dressed as fairies, and the same materials — white cotton net and silver ribbon — were used for both of them. Mine, dressed by Aunt Lizzie, came straight out of the latter years of the nineteenth century, in a high-necked, long-waisted and long-skirted dress with medium-length leg-of-mutton sleeves. A prim Victorian doll with a neat silver bow plonked straight on top of its head and another at each side of the long waistline. Bets's doll, on the other hand, proved that Emily, while herself still wearing fashions fully thirty years out of date, was by no means ignorant of that fact and had not failed to use her eyes when out window-shopping.
Her
fairy doll wore a short, full-skirted ballet dress with a tiny, tight bodice, silver shoulder straps and a bunch of silver ribbons over one eye — 1920, here I come! I was surprised at Emily; and Aunt Lizzie was plainly shocked. But the stockings in which this very different pair of fairies appeared were destined to prick the delightful, sparkling soap-bubble of Father Christmas, reindeer-sleigh and snow-fairies, and destroy it for Bets and me for ever…

I had celebrated my eleventh birthday during the summer holidays and in another two years would enter my teens. So I ought to have known better. But Mother had always been so clever over the delivery of our Christmas stockings that neither Bets nor I had ever been able to catch her at it. On the only occasion that Bets had woken up and caught a glimpse of her, the glimpse had merely served to convince Bets that she had actually seen Father Christmas and that the whole story was therefore true — she had proved it with her own eyes! I may at times have nourished doubts, but despite being well into double figures, I too was never a hundred per cent sure, and I always hoped against hope that the lovely story was true — as true as the Christmas
story; the Baby in a manger, the star and the shepherds and ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing'! Why couldn't it be true? My Indian friends and playmates had told me about far stranger things that had happened in India.

Unfortunately Mother had quite forgotten to brief Aunt Lizzie and Emily on how to swap an empty stocking with its pair, previously filled in another room and kept hidden until the recipients were asleep. And since all that the old dears knew about Christmas stockings was that one waited until the children were asleep and then filled the stockings that hung at the end of their beds, Bets and I woke up around half-past ten or eleven on Christmas Eve to find the room bright with electric light and noisy with the rustle of paper as the two old ladies, wearing night-caps and solid woollen dressing-gowns, solemnly wrapped each item in sheets of tissue paper and stowed them one by one in the stocking we had hung up so hopefully before turning out the light.

It was a terrible blow. We had been fooled all along and there was no Father Christmas after all. That cherished, multicoloured soap-bubble burst with an almost audible ‘
pop!
', leaving nothing but a small wet smudge where something glittering and magical had perished. We shut our eyes tightly and did not stir until the old darlings had finished their work and tip-toed out, clicking off the light as they went and closing the door softly behind them. After a short pause we talked it over in the dark and eventually, having swallowed our disappointment, decided that we had been incredibly lucky in having been able to believe in Father Christmas for so long, and that not for anything would we have missed the anticipation and thrill we had enjoyed on past Christmas Eves as we hopefully hung up our stockings, wondering if Father Christmas would come and fearing that he might not. Nor would we have forgone the wild excitement of waking up in the pre-dawn dark to creep down to the foot of the bed and feel the stocking bulging with delights. Yes, we had indeed been lucky. Enormously lucky! We would never regret having been able to believe in Father Christmas for so long. But oh, how sad we were that it had ended, and that for us that particular magic would never be experienced again.

It was during this same Christmas holiday that we saw our first Christmas pantomime. We had heard a lot about pantomimes and had greatly looked forward to seeing one. Aunt Lizzie had booked seats
for
Aladdin
at a Bedford theatre, and since we were of course familiar with the story of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp, we were wildly excited at the prospect of seeing it acted out on a stage. How would they do the Genie? … the cave of jewels? We could hardly wait! For some forgotten reason, possibly to do with cookery, we arrived at the theatre with only just enough time to find our seats and buy a programme: and then Aunt Lizzie discovered that she had left the tickets at home. Panic! She remembered the numbers, but the theatre attendants were adamant: we could not be admitted without tickets and that was that. It was the vicar and the verger all over again. Bets and I were on the edge of tears as we heard the muffled music of the overture striking up, and even Bill looked shaken. There was nothing for it but for Aunt Lizzie to hurry back to The Birches and fetch the wretched things as quickly as she could. Fortunately, it was not very far; so leaving us in charge of the commissionaire she hurried off, muttering: ‘Oh dear oh dear, how very
vexing
to be sure!' — an expression she only made use of when seriously put out (I don't think she knew any stronger ones).

We stood forlornly in the empty foyer, a picture of misery and embarrassment while the minutes ticked by and she did not return. We had so looked forward to this treat and now we were doomed to miss a whole act — perhaps two … Perhaps half the show! What if she couldn't find the tickets? Supposing she had tripped and broken her ankle, hurrying up the front steps …? Despairing tears began to trickle down Bets's face and the commissionaire's heart melted. He said that as our seats were in the dress circle we could go in and stand at the back of it until our aunt returned, and he would show us the way and tell her where to find us. Oh joy! We hurried after him and were ushered into the back of the circle and from there had our first sight of a traditional pantomime.

It came as a worse shock than almost anything that had gone before. Worse than Tilbury or Kensington Gardens or the biscuit-coloured stuff that the English called sand. No one — not even Bill, who from the age of six had been taken to see this form of entertainment during his Christmas holidays — had thought to give us any idea of what a British pantomime was like, so we were thrown in at the deep end. There on the stage, in place of ancient China, were three men dancing a species of clog dance while singing a popular song entitled ‘Where
do flies go in the winter time?'; the middle one got up as a caricature of a cockney charlady complete with apron, hair-curlers and striped stockings, and the ones on either side dressed as British ‘bobbies', policemen. Oh lost illusions, where do
you
go in this peculiar country?

It was a very sleazy pantomime put on by a third-rate touring company whose props and scenery were sadly tatty — a defect for which the war years and not the company can be blamed, for it cannot have been easy to get cloth or paint at such a time. But they did their best. And so did Bets and I; dutifully clapping and laughing whenever the audience did, and assuring Aunt Lizzie that we were enjoying it. But it was another sad let-down, as we admitted to each other in whispers after our bedroom lights had been turned out that night. England appeared determined to disappoint us.

We did eventually discover that not all Christmas pantomimes were as tatty and terrible as this one, because a year or two later someone took us to see another;
Cinderella
this time, staged in one of London's largest and most resplendent theatres, Drury Lane. It was wonderful! No tat here, but as much glamour and glitter as even the most critical child's heart could desire. A dashing Prince (we did not realize, poor innocents, that he was a she), a ravishing ‘Cinders' and an enchanting Fairy Godmother; a glass coach drawn by
real
ponies and a succession of ‘transformation scenes' that left us dumb with admiration.

Yet it was on this occasion that Bets, entering the auditorium, stopped dead in the aisle and, looking indignantly round the huge theatre, announced in ringing tones: ‘It isn't
nearly
as big as the Simla theatre!' Alas, the years were passing, and as she herself grew up the memory of that little doll-sized theatre, on whose boards she had last appeared as Tinkerbell, had swelled in retrospect to a size that made Drury Lane seem puny. For the past in which she and I had been so small had stayed still; as it must for all of us. And though we were to see that little theatre again and again, and act in it too, to this day we both still think of its stage as an enormous expanse on which we first danced in The Pageant, when a mere slice of it represented the whole of Great Britain, Europe and the Middle East!

Aunt Lizzie sent us back to Portpool with a large tuck-box crammed with home-made toffee, fudge and chocolates, in addition to several of her superlative cakes; all of which led to a distinct upsurge in our popularity, despite the fact that we continued to speak to each other
in Hindustani and were not Indian Princesses, or even Indians — crimes for which we were never really forgiven. But apart from the temporary success of our tuck-box, only three other incidents connected with Portpool remain in my memory. The brightest by far was the day when the entire upper school was taken by bus to see, at a matinée in the Winter Garden Theatre at Margate, that legendary prima ballerina, Anna Pavlova.

In later years some balletomane of the Thirties wrote of her that if you were to ask almost any well-known dancer what had made them take up ballet, the chances were ninety-nine to one in favour of the reply being that either she or he, or their parents, had once seen Pavlova dance. That statement was no exaggeration. I had never seen ballet before, and never imagined that any mere human could create such beauty: could
move
like that.
Dance
like that. It was a revelation. Pavlova danced the Autumn Leaf as though she weighed no more than gossamer being blown here and there in an October wind. She danced as though she was a butterfly; or a mayfly new-hatched, above a trout stream in June. As if she could, if she chose, dance across a field of corn without bending a single stem. And at the last she danced her famous Dying Swan so that there was not a dry eye in the house. Almost every girl from Portpool left that theatre in a daze of ecstasy, firmly resolved to follow in her footsteps and become a prima ballerina: Bets being among the worst hit. I don't know if any of them followed this up, but I am sure that not one of them ever forgot that shimmering afternoon in the Winter Garden at Margate.

The second incident descends abruptly from the realm of the sublime to the painfully silly. One of the girls in my dormitory, an overweight child of about twelve years old, plumped herself down during the night on one of the Victorian china chamber-pots that were provided in case of emergency (pupils were discouraged from traipsing down the passages to the lavatory in the small hours). The pot, proving unequal to the strain, shattered into about fifty pieces, most of which had to be picked out of her wincing posterior one by one. No one could fail to sympathize with her, but at the time, and unkind though it may seem, the incident struck the entire dormitory as hilariously funny and we were laughing ourselves into stitches as we tried to help the shrieking sufferer, while the girl who was sent to fetch help reeled away whooping with mirth, and apparently had some difficulty in
making herself understood when delivering her message. Miss Florence refused to see the joke. So did Miss Barnes, who had been awakened by the racket and hurried over to inquire into the cause, and who proceeded to blast us into silence with a brief, blighting speech that would have done credit to a Kommissar in the KGB, and sent us scuttling back to bed as Miss Florence whisked the howling victim off to the sanatorium.

I remember that after our headmistress had turned the lights out and departed, we lay awake for a long time speculating in whispers as to the form of treatment being undergone by our absent room-mate. Prayer or stitches? For by now we were all well aware of something that was officially a secret, but that in the not too distant future was to break up the school: that Miss Florence was a Christian Scientist and that Miss Barnes was undoubtedly aware of it.

As matron, Miss Florence paid lip-service to the parents of non-Christian-Science children by employing a local doctor as the ‘school' doctor; but she did not send for him if she could help it, preferring to stick to the lines laid down by her faith. I realize now that this must have been why our dear Mrs Ponson had recommended Portpool — because she herself secretly shared Miss Florence's beliefs; I think it was naughty of her not to tell Mother. The end for the school came when one of its pupils went down with a severe attack of something like pneumonia or typhoid or one of those pre-antibiotic-days killer diseases, and instead of calling in the doctor, Miss Florence relied on prayer and ‘inculcating faith' in the delirious child (‘
pain is not real
…
all sickness is in the mind and can be exorcised by prayer and faith
…').

I must have been a poor judge of character, for had anyone asked me, I would have said that Miss Barnes was the dominant sister. But the evidence provided by this affair shows that Miss Florence was the tougher of the two. She stuck to her guns even when the child became far too ill to understand anything that was said to her, let alone exhortations of this nature, and it was only at the eleventh hour that Miss Barnes lost her nerve and sent for the doctor. That gentleman, finding the girl too ill to be moved, hurriedly imported a couple of nurses from the nearest hospital and summoned the child's parents; who arrived by the earliest possible train and naturally raised hell all round. Luckily for everyone concerned the child survived — though it had been a narrow squeak. The school was less fortunate. I gather
that the incensed parents wrote to the parents or guardians of every other Portpool girl (in these cash-oriented days they would of course have sued for vast damages), with the result that a good many parents snatched their little darlings away. Of the remainder, some allowed their children to stay with Miss Barnes, while the rest — all of them Christian Scientists — went off with Miss Florence who presumably founded a small school for the Faithful somewhere else.